Agropur's Pride campaign, created by Lg2 in March 2017, used a 60-second TV spot to celebrate passionate Canadian dairy producers and drove brand awareness up
ARCHIVEAgropur Pride Puts Canadian Dairy Farmers at the Heart of Brand Identity
Agropur's Pride campaign is a 60-second Canadian television spot, created by Lg2 and launched in March 2017, that positions the cooperative's dairy products as a direct expression of the passion and commitment of Canadian dairy producers working together.
The campaign carries a single, clear argument: behind every one of Agropur's quality Canadian products stands a network of dedicated farmers whose collective effort deserves recognition. That framing transforms a commodity category into an emotional proposition, asking Canadian consumers not simply to buy dairy but to feel genuinely proud of its origin. The cooperative's masterbrand platform, anchored in the story of passionate farmers, was designed to build top-of-mind awareness for Agropur itself rather than for any individual product line, even as subsidiary brands such as Natrel, OKA, and Iögo stood to benefit from the halo effect.
Launched in Canada in March 2017 and supported by digital and social media channels alongside the television broadcast, as reported by Strategy Online, the campaign marked a deliberate shift in Agropur's communications strategy. Rather than leading with product attributes or price, Lg2 constructed a narrative built entirely around the human reality of cooperative dairy farming. The approach reflected Agropur's structural identity: a farmer-owned cooperative whose members are, by definition, the passionate farmers the advertising celebrates. In a competitive Canadian dairy landscape where multinational rivals commanded budgets several times larger, according to Agropur's own characterisation of its competitive set, this producer-first storytelling offered a point of differentiation that money alone could not replicate. The Clapboard Score for Pride stands at 63 out of 100, reflecting solid strategic coherence and emotional clarity alongside room for greater creative distinctiveness.
ARCHIVEAgropur occupies a structurally unusual position in the Canadian dairy market. The cooperative is farmer-owned, which means the passionate farmers depicted in Pride are not brand ambassadors hired for a campaign but the actual members of the business. Lg2 identified that ownership story as the most defensible competitive asset available to the brand and built the entire strategic platform around it.
The competitive pressure facing Agropur in Canada was substantial. Agropur itself characterised its rivals as multinationals up to four times its size, and named competitors including Lactalis, Nestlé, Danone, Fonterra, and FrieslandCampina as the dominant forces in the global dairy sector, according to reporting by Dairy Reporter and Congress Gov documentation of the international dairy landscape. Against that scale, a price-led or feature-led advertising strategy would have been difficult to sustain. The cooperative identity, by contrast, was something no multinational could credibly claim in the Canadian market.
The strategic rationale was further sharpened by Agropur's brand architecture. Its product lines — Natrel, OKA, and Iögo — each held meaningful positions within Canada. According to Agropur's own reporting, Natrel held approximately 45% of Canada's fine-filtered milk segment, 64% of the lactose-free milk segment, and 40% of the organic milk segment. Iögo yogurt held more than 12% of the Canadian market and was growing at approximately twice the category rate, also per Agropur. Building a masterbrand campaign that celebrated the cooperative's Canadian dairy producers created an umbrella of emotional credibility under which all three product lines could grow without requiring separate origin stories. The choice to use real dairy producers rather than actors or celebrities, as reported by Strategy Online, reinforced the authenticity that the entire strategy depended upon.
Olivier Staub directed the Pride film and also served as director of photography, giving the production a consistent visual authorship from first frame to last. That dual role is reflected in the finished work: the cinematography reads as a considered artistic choice rather than an operational default, using the textures and light of Canadian agricultural settings to ground the emotional argument in a specific, credible place.
The creative team at Lg2 was led by creative directors Sylvain Dufresne and Marc Fortin, with Sylvain Dufresne also credited as copywriter, Frédéric Tremblay as art director, and Yvann Thibaudeau as editor. Michel David at Morrison produced the spot, with music composed by Apollo Studios. That combination of an experienced creative leadership pairing with a single-director visual approach produced a film whose tone sits closer to documentary observation than conventional advertising, a register well suited to a narrative built around real people doing real work.
The decision to cast actual Canadian dairy producers rather than performers is the central creative act of the campaign. It shifts the film's relationship with the viewer from persuasion to testimony. Audiences watching Pride are not being shown an idealised version of farming life but are being introduced, however briefly, to the people whose cooperative membership makes Agropur's dairy products possible. That specificity of human detail is what gives the 60-second format its emotional density. The copy, credited to Dufresne, operates with equivalent restraint: the central line — that behind every quality Canadian product stand passionate and committed dairy producers working together — is presented as a statement of fact rather than a marketing claim, which is precisely what makes it land as pride rather than promotion. Digital and social media extensions, as reported by Strategy Online, amplified the television spot's reach across Canada without altering its core register.
Agropur's Pride campaign produced documented and significant results in the Canadian market. According to Jean-François Couture, Agropur's vice-president of marketing, as reported by Strategy Online, brand awareness increased by 250% following the 2017 campaign. That figure represents a step-change rather than incremental progress and reflects the scale of the masterbrand platform's ambition.
Agropur's prompted national awareness in Canada increased to 56% following the campaign, per Agropur's own reporting. The product lines positioned beneath the masterbrand also responded: Natrel, OKA, and Iögo each experienced sales increases after the campaign launched, as reported by Strategy Online, though specific sales uplift figures by brand are not publicly itemised. The broader financial context is instructive. Agropur reported 2017 sales of C$6.4 billion, up 7.7% year over year, with EBITDA of C$444 million, up 7.9%, per Agropur's annual reporting. While it would be an overstatement to attribute those corporate-level results solely to a single campaign, the directional alignment between the launch of Pride in March 2017 and the annual financial outcomes is a credible indicator of category momentum.
What the numbers confirm, and what the Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects, is that Pride succeeded as a strategic communications instrument more than as a purely creative showpiece. The campaign gave Agropur a platform, a tone, and a cast of real characters that could sustain a masterbrand story over time. In a Canadian dairy market defined by larger multinational competitors, that structural contribution — building recognisable cooperative identity from the ground up — may prove to be the campaign's most durable achievement.
Agropur's Pride campaign is a 60-second Canadian television spot created by Lg2 and launched in March 2017. It celebrates the passionate Canadian dairy producers behind Agropur's cooperative, positioning their collective work as a source of national pride and building a masterbrand platform across Natrel, OKA, and Iögo product lines.
Lg2, the Montreal-based creative agency, created Pride for Agropur. Creative directors Sylvain Dufresne and Marc Fortin led the team, with Olivier Staub directing and shooting the film, Yvann Thibaudeau editing, and Apollo Studios composing the music, per Clapboard's production credits documentation.
Agropur's brand awareness increased by 250% following the Pride campaign, according to Jean-François Couture, Agropur's vice-president of marketing, as reported by Strategy Online. Agropur's prompted national awareness in Canada also reached 56% after the campaign launched, per Agropur's own reporting.
Agropur is a farmer-owned cooperative, making its dairy producers actual business members rather than hired talent. Lg2 identified this as a defensible competitive advantage against multinational rivals Agropur characterised as up to four times its size, with real farmers lending the campaign authenticity no competitor could replicate.
Natrel, OKA, and Iögo each recorded sales increases following the Pride campaign launch, as reported by Strategy Online. Natrel held approximately 45% of Canada's fine-filtered milk segment and 64% of the lactose-free segment at the time, while Iögo held more than 12% of the Canadian yogurt market, per Agropur.
Agropur's Pride campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong strategic coherence and emotional clarity in celebrating passionate Canadian dairy producers, while indicating room for greater creative distinctiveness relative to the highest-performing work in the food and drink category.
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